Little Smirk
by HopefulLaughter
Summary: One-shot. It was perfect, just what he was looking for on a night like tonight. The boy was just walking along the back alley, probably taking a shortcut home, and he was all alone. Axel pulled the knives out from their holders, a smirk on his face.


**So, this is just a little one-shot I thought I'd do about Axel. Nothing too big, just something that happened to cross my mind. **

**Rated T just to be safe.**

**I don't own anything except the idea of this story.**

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The man in front of me, slouched against the wall, had blood dribbling down his chin while his skin slowly grew pale. If not for his angry eyes, he may have appeared dead. I glanced over at the lit-up clock tower to confirm the time before the sound of movement diverted my attention. The man before me was struggling to get up, obviously in pain the way his face twisted, and as he coughed blood splattered onto the cold pavement. I only cocked an eyebrow at his struggle, suppressing the urge to laugh at his futile attempt. When he finally realized the pain was too much, he collapsed against the wall with his breath coming out heavily and his eyes once again were upon mine.

It was just after three in the morning, I should have disappeared by now, but he was intriguing me beyond what I would have liked to believe. Instead of begging for his life now or even before, he refused to say anything. When I had first approached him he had fought, that's for sure, but in the end I had won. Ignoring the metallic taste within my own mouth, I grinned; I always win. The dagger had slipped easily between his ribs after he had sent a clenched hand at my face, and the other knife I pulled out punctured his lung. In the condition that he was in, I could easily kill him. Instead of doing that, I watched as the blood slowly seeped into his lung and his breathing became more unsteady.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, he took in a deep breath of air. Closing his brown eyes, he cleared his throat before they finally opened and he brought them back up to mine. "Why?"

A question? Well, that was something new. I watched him for a second, watching his laboured breaths and the way it was becoming increasingly more difficult to breathe properly. "Why?" I repeated the question, bringing his attention back to me and less upon the situation at hand. "Well," I tapped my chin thoughtfully, watching the growing frustration upon his face as I took my dear time. Oh, this was just _too_ fun. "You were in the wrong place at the wrong time bud, and I was just lookin' for some blood," I allowed a grin to split across my face at the simplicity of the answer.

"No," shaking his head, he instantly went into a coughing fit. The wet sounding coughs proved to me that I had been right to believe I had punctured his lung. Tilting my head slightly to the side, I waited until he finally had calmed down to hear what he had left to say. After all, he was a dead man. Unless he had someone watching me right at this moment, then he had no chance at all. "No… I m-meant why are… Why are you doing this?"

I threw my had back and laughed, and clutched my sides once they began to hurt. The question was just so absurd, so _stupid_, that it had me forgetting the seriousness of the situation. I had stabbed someone in an attempt to kill them, and now I was listening to their question that had the most obvious answer in the world. "W-why am I doing this!?" I repeated his question, wiping away the tears that were in my eyes and trying to stop the laughter that was bubbling within my throat. Although it was hard, I managed to swallow it down. "Aw man, you've gotta be joking me. _Why am I doing this?!_ Isn't it obvious?! I'm a murderer!"

He lowered his eyes, his shaking hand moving over onto his abdomen as he deliberated. The blood had soaked through most of his shirt now, but he didn't seem to mind at all. It was almost as if he had accepted what has happened to him. When his eyes were brought up to mine, there was no longer an anger within them, but pity. "But… _Why?_"

Bewildered by the comment, I just looked at him and furrowed my brows. He wanted to know why I was a murderer, why I was doing this to people? What did it matter? He was going to die, this information is of no use to him. Still, the question allowed memories that I had buried long ago to resurface. Memories that I did not want to face.

People may say I'm this way because I didn't get loved enough as a child, that if I had someone to care for me a little bit more then maybe I would have turned out differently. Would that really change the person I am today? Hell, I may not have been loved as much as I should have been but that wasn't a factor in my murderous behaviour. From the moment I was able to think my own thoughts, I knew that I wasn't like everyone else. I was _different_.

Back then, my name was Lea Wolfe. I didn't have the greatest life; my mother was always gone, my father wasn't loyal, and my brother didn't care. Sure, we had the house with the white picket fence and we had a dog before she got ran over by a vehicle. We weren't poor, that's for sure, but we weren't the richest people on the street either. That would have been the Lockharts. Otherwise, we were just well off. My brother and myself had our separate rooms, our parents shared one, and we had a flat screen in our living room. It was overall really great, I don't think I would change anything despite my parents not being around.

My mother, well, she was a pretty woman. She had the dark red hair and bright green eyes that would have made anyone fall in love with her. I guess that was how she entrapped my father, even though she began to fall in love with her job. Soon that was her only priority, the law firm and the lawyers within it. I guess she might have been cheating on my father as well, but that was none of my business. Usually nothing was any of my business, even when I asked questions about her work she would usually shoot them down. No, she wasn't the greatest mother, but it was only because she had no one else to turn to. My father didn't let her have the love that she deserved and that was the only thing she was looking for.

Well, as for my father, he was a greedy man; a fool at best. His cold blue eyes proved him to be only that, while he managed to spike his blonde hair and look appealing to the whores he brought home. No, he wouldn't do that when my mother was home, it would only upset her. Instead, he made sure she was working another late night. Then he would leave the house for a few hours, get drunk, and bring home a lady friend or two. My brother and I knew exactly what was going on, but neither of us cared. We just wanted to live our own lives, and let them live theirs. If they wanted to cheat on each other, fine. Why not? They were content with what was happening, even if they didn't know it.

When my mother finally found out that my father was cheating, she left without a word. She had her work and friends, she didn't want to see anything of the family she had been living with for the past ten years. Of course, that was long before the high school burnt down. Yeah, after she left everything began to go down. My father didn't have a steady job, so money was always an issue. Remember that flat screen TV? That was gone within an instant, the house with the white picket fence also fled the scene as well. Soon we found ourselves living in rundown motels. After my mother had left, I never saw her since.

Well, out of all of them, I was closest to my brother. He was a smart-ass, hustled pool, drank underage, did some drugs, but out of the two of us he was the good one. Why? Well, he had a heart. He actually felt _guilty_ when the entire high school lit up because of the cigarette he didn't put out. That was the incident I was talking about earlier, about how the entire school lit up in brilliant orange and yellow flames. I can remember the image all so clearly, the way he looked at me when I laughed at the news. It was almost as if he was… Disturbed. Like I said before, I always felt like I was different from everyone else. I guess my brother also saw the difference in me as well.

It might have been from that moment that I realized my fascination with fire, or it may have been a little bit earlier with some left over matches. Either way, I soon became an arson. My brother would watch as I played with a lighter he'd let me have, or watch as I burned some of the cigarette packs that were lying around. I could tell he was worried about my wellbeing, but he never voiced his opinion. It was just something that didn't need to be said, something he really didn't have to worry about. After all I wasn't turning into a murderer… Yet.

Well, my pyromaniac antics soon turned into something quite more serious when I began to burn bugs. They scuttled around, trying to get away from the burning flesh that was upon their bodies but in the end they died. They always did. Afterwards I would poke at them, and if they twitched I would light them up again. Ah, it was a fun game in my youth. Of course, if my father looked closer he would have realized that it was unhealthy. My brother knew, but what could he do? He hated my father, and like hell he was going to go to another adult.

It wasn't until I was older that he thought I should probably be coming to some parties with him. By this time I had moved from burning insects when I was eight, to setting little animals on fire. Once or twice I had killed a stray cat, sometimes a dog, but they were mostly rats and other small creatures. It was all the same fascination, I just learned to love the terror they had that went along with it. So when I went to this particular party, I wasn't at all surprised to see the regular sluts drinking as much as they could, the same jocks fighting with one another, and a few crazy antics done by a few comedians. My brother was more of a comic relief guy, he basically _brought_ the party.

So he was pretty shocked when the girl he was making out with had suddenly pulled away from him, her eyes wide in horror at the world around her. Yup, you guessed it; _everything was on fire_. Remember those jocks? Well, they heard a rumour that I had gotten with one of their girlfriends and tried to kill me. Maybe not literally, but that didn't hinder the anger I had set in my mind. I simply went to the back, grabbed gasoline and dumped it everywhere that no one was, and soon the entire house was on fire. I walked away that night with a grin on my face, listening as people screamed in terror and others screamed in pain. A few lost their lives, most escaped, but no one found out who had done the awful deed. I was in the clear.

Until my brother finally was able to come up to me face-to-face. Without a single word, he slugged me across the face and made sure I was down on the ground before he even tried speaking to me. He told me I had no right to do that, that something was really wrong with me. He was scared, I could tell, but I simply laughed. Of course something was wrong with me, I had known that for years. Was he just _finally_ beginning to find that out? After that comment he drove his foot into my stomach, and he left. It was almost like mother all over again, but this time I felt a hollow pit inside of myself.

That hollow pit just grew and grew, and my anger deepened as the days went on. _I_ was the one who had something wrong with me? _I_ was the screwed up one? What about our dad? He knew as well as I did that the man didn't do anything to support us, he did shit all. I looked off to the side as more images flooded through my mind, my lip curling up into a snarl. What about you, my brother? You tried to hide your pain by doing everything and anything, hell you may have been just as screwed up as I was. So with all of this anger, I did the only logical thing that I had ever thought of, and it might have been the smartest as well.

I committed suicide.

Okay, maybe not literally, but I killed the person who I was. Lea Wolfe was no more, he was just the misfit living in that old motel room. He was just an empty hollow shell, devoid of almost all emotion. Me? Well, that's when I was born. I took that knife that had been sitting upon the kitchen counter and made sure that I carved up my father pretty good, making sure he didn't bleed to death until I was finished with him. Sure, I had a black eye and a few other bruises but it was worth it. By the time I was finished with him, he was lying on that couch with his dead eyes watching the TV.

I left that motel room with everything burning inside, a smile playing upon my lips as I walked away. I pulled the hood over to cover my face as the sound of sirens filled the area; the police, fire department, and the ambulance. Although they may have been able to save a few lives within the motel rooms, there would be two people who they would never be able to save.

"The good die young," I found my voice saying as my vision was brought back to the present. He was still staring at me with that questioning look, for a reason I didn't understand. Sure, my childhood wasn't the greatest, but then there are worst ones out there. The grin was a pained one, I'm sure of it, but I placed it onto my face anyways and shrugged nonchalantly. "And me? Well-"

I dove my knife into his chest and listened to him gargle a scream of agony. It wasn't quiet, that was for sure, but I didn't care anymore. I just wanted him to suffer. So I pulled out the knife and examined the crimson liquid upon it. It glistened beneath the light from the moon, for the alley was too dark for any other source. Once I turned my eyes back to the furious ones that were glaring at me, I found myself smirking. "I'm no exception."

Then I slit his neck as deep as I could, and was gone before the blood even touched the ground.


End file.
